Time step size selection for radiation diffusion calculations (Q1302939)

This note describes a time-step control technique applied to the radiation-diffusion equation \[ \frac{ \partial ( a T^4 + C_\nu T)} { \partial t} = \nabla \cdot \biggl( \frac {c} {3\kappa} \nabla a T^4\biggr) \] which is obtained from \[ \frac { \partial E} { \partial t} = \nabla \cdot \biggl( \frac{c} {3\kappa} \nabla E\biggr) + c \kappa (a T^4 - E) \] and \[ \frac{ \partial C_\nu T} { \partial t} = c \kappa (E - a T^4) \] by assuming an equilibrium between the radiation and material temperatures, namely that \[ E = a T ^4 . \] Time-step control for the above equations usually takes into account the relative change in the dependent variables when considering methods for which the nonlinearities have a dominant weight. The proposed technique tries to keep small the relative change in energy so that linearization of the considered equation does not cause heavy errors, that is, nonlinearities influence lightly the performed calculations. Numerical experiments carried out with different implementations of the proposed technique are described and some of their computed results are shown.